[Pkg-julia-devel] I'm planning to RM src:julia . Can't bear anymore.

[M. Zhou]

Hi,

Long story short. Julia debian package seriously lacks of volunteer
to work on it and keep it up to date properly. Initially I planned
to get this package to the latest 1.7.3 version and solve a bunch
of bugs.

Then I discovered that the latest version downloads a million
code snapshots that are specific to julia. I gave up halfway
at nearly 16 patches named "no-download-xxx". And now all
the XXX.jl standard libraries will not be downloaded.

Then I just figure out it started to download XXX.jll .
I roughly estimate that there will be eventually more than 50
patches named as
  no-download-xxx
and more than 50 embedded julia-specific artifact.

Julia itself has became a standalone binary file distribution
and formed its own ecosystem. We should use upstream
prebuilt binaries instead of trying to build on our own
and trap ourselves in the BLAS/LAPACK ILP64 pitfalls.

If no one is willing to save it ... I shall file an RM bug
against src:julia .
Without update, it build-depends on llvm-9, which is already
removed from unstable. That means even if we stay at an old
version, it's still a seriously broken package.


In order to avoid wasting time, I suggest everyone think
carefully when dealing with packages that will download
a million files from internet during the build process,
like bazel+tensorflow, julia, etc.

I give up.